


Retrograde

by ohwise1ne



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Dream Sex, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Heavy Angst, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-09 20:50:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18924766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohwise1ne/pseuds/ohwise1ne
Summary: “Tell me where you are, Rey."She doesn’t open her eyes. Not when the world begins to vibrate and shudder around them, or even in the moments before the splittingcrackthat propels Kylo back into the cold darkness of his quarters.Long afterward, he lies awake in his sleeper, contemplating—not the twin stars in her sky or the hills in the distance—but the shape of her lips, parting ever so slightly when he murmured her name.This is how it starts.





	Retrograde

**Author's Note:**

> **PLEASE NOTE:** This fic gets very angsty at points, and I left it with an intentionally ambiguous ending. That being said, I've been working on this for several months, and I'm really quite proud of it. I hope you'll give it a chance, even with the angst.

The dreams begin when he is finally starting to forget her.

She has long ago closed him off from her thoughts, but it doesn't stop their minds from bleeding together while they sleep. Light years apart, and still reaching for one another—their coupled destinies gravitating slowly toward the inevitable.

They are always balmy, these dreams of hers. Filled with sprawling skies and the scent of a waxing summer. It makes him wonder if she's somewhere warm and vibrant. A perfect hiding place for a girl so full of life.

"I will have to kill you one day." He says it casually. As though they are discussing the pleasant weather of this planet she dreams of.

She sits cross-legged beneath a leafy tree, hovering just above the swaying grass. She is ignoring him in this dream. Feigning meditation.

She does this often. Perhaps she thinks she's fooling him into believing she doesn't notice him.

Kylo is not fooled.

He sees the way she tenses as he approaches—floating more than walking, as one does in dreams. She keeps her emotions so close to the surface, his little Jedi. She is as transparent as the crystal skies she's conjured above their heads.

"It doesn't have to be that way." His voice is soft, but he knows she still hears him—sees the way her jaw clenches, her fists curl.

No. She doesn't fool Kylo one bit.

He stops directly before her. The grass begins to tremble, blades shivering in the non-existent breeze of her emotion.

“Tell me where you are, Rey."

She is starting to slip away from him now. The sky is melting above their heads, the tree dissolving in smoke—and Rey as well, wisps of fine mist curling from her skin.

“Rey.” Another step. “Tell me.”

She doesn’t open her eyes. Not even when the world begins to vibrate and shudder around them, in the moments before the splitting crack that propels Kylo back into the cold darkness of his quarters.

He lies awake in his sleeper long afterward, contemplating—not the twin stars in her sky or the hills in the distance—but the shape of her lips, parting ever so slightly when he murmured her name.

This is how it starts.

* * *

The air is cold enough to freeze the moisture on his lashes. All around him, the scream of blaster fire is amplified by the icy walls of the caves where she has summoned him tonight.

A battle.

She is dreaming of a battle.

Everywhere is the stink of death and burning flesh. The Resistance forces have been trapped in a cavern just a little further down, but Kylo shuts his eyes and—

_(reaches, her nearness like a warm and tingling itch beneath his fingernails, reaching coaxing searching for—)_

She is in the opposite direction. A light that refuses to dampen, hovering just at the edge of his periphery.

Waiting.

Kylo follows the winding path of these caves like he’s walked them a hundred times before. Perhaps he has—just in the smaller shoes of this girl whose memories refuse to give him peace. Bleeding into his consciousness in that strange way they’re doing now.

He knows she’s waiting in the next chamber. She knows he knows—the air begins to prickle with her awareness of his approach. Her anticipation.

She attempts to ambush him anyway.

The first clash of their sabers scatters bright sparks across the cavern’s snowy floor. Her face glows red in the light of his weapon, eyes full of fire.

“There’s no need for this, Rey.”

Kylo must raise his voice to speak over the drone of the sabers, the sharp hiss as her laser skitters across his. She ducks and whirls, swinging again. He deflects the blow with ease.

“Your Resistance is finished.”

"You'll have to kill me first," she snarls.

Teeth bared, she leaps to the side, swinging. Still such a wild, feral thing—though she has clearly been training. Kylo wonders how she would blossom, if she allowed him to mold and shape her. There is so much he could show her. If she would only let him.

Another flurry of blows, and she is backed up against the icy wall. Cornered.

“I don’t want to kill you,” he tells her.

It is the truth. Even if fate seems to be guiding them down this path, time and time again.

“You’ve already made your choice,” she hisses, pushing back against his saber.

“You don’t know my mind.”

“But I do.” Wetness pools in her eyes—from exhaustion, or anger, or something else altogether, Kylo will never know. “I know what you need to do.”

It feels as though they’ve had this conversation a thousand times before, in a thousand different settings. In a forest. A crater. A cave. Like they both already know its conclusion.

“It doesn’t have to end like that,” he tells her anyway. He doesn’t understand the tears rolling down her face. Nor does he understand the strange and overwhelming urge to extinguish his weapon and—and do what, exactly?

“I don’t want it to,” he adds, barely audible over the hum and crackle of the sabers.

He stares into the face of his enemy—shocked and outraged and _young,_ she is too young for this game she’s playing, tempting forces far greater than she could ever understand—and as he stares, his grip falters, his face softens, his eyes take in the way she is not truly resisting, this beacon of the Resistance—not really fighting back at all—

Before the dream snatches him away this time, he turns off his saber. Just to see the way her lips part again.

* * *

He finds Hux in the lower docking bay, overseeing the deployment of a division to settle a trade dispute in the Outer Rim.

“There has been no new information,” Hux is saying with great irritation. “For _months.”_

“That’s not what I asked.”

"What you're asking is a waste of my time," Hux snaps. "Do you think it would not be wiser, Supreme Leader, to focus our efforts on a threat that is not already extinguished?"

"The Resistance will not be extinguished until every last piece of it has been snuffed out." Kylo's voice is low and icy through his modulator. "I want a comprehensive list of potential hideouts. Safe houses. Smugglers who may be providing supplies."

Hux is clearly beginning to lose his patience. "The Resistance is _finished,_ Supreme Leader. We destroyed them. There are much more important matters to attend to—though none of them, I understand, are quite so exciting as your obsession with—"

His words compress into a wet gargle. Hux's eyes bulge from his pointy face as Kylo deprives him of the air required to finish his accusation.

“A full report, General Hux. Don't make me tell you again."

A group of Stormtroopers marching by falters at the display, slightly out of step. Their general, toes brushing the ground, gives Kylo a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.

Satisfied, he leaves Hux in a crumpled pile on the hangar, wheezing for breath. As Kylo strides past a fleet of gunships, the object of his _obsession_ flashes before his mind's eye. His hand tingles beneath his glove with the ghost of her fingertips, branded where she touched him.

Hux, of course, is correct. The Resistance is destroyed. A handful of rogue fighters poses no real threat to the First Order.

Kylo is determined to find her anyway.

* * *

Some of his dreams cannot possibly belong to her.

Not because she doesn’t make an appearance. Rey is, in fact, the central focus of these particular evenings—though in a very different way from the ones they share together.

No. These dreams are entirely his own.

Rey doesn’t look away from him here. Her eyes refuse to release his—even when there's so much more of her he wants to look at. But whenever they wander down her body, tracing all the golden curves of her, he finds himself drawn inevitably back to her face.

It’s not because she isn't beautiful. She is the most captivating creature he has ever encountered, this spitfire of a girl who is somehow so soft beneath all her sharp edges. No—it's because her reactions are somehow even more extraordinary than the places he touches to elicit them.

Rey's eyes are as naked as the rest of her like this. They give him everything he asks for. Kylo bathes in the pleasure he finds in the depths of them, as endless as the oceans of his youth—but malleable too, so responsive to his every little touch and murmur. He drinks in her face as he trails his fingers under the softness of her breasts—presses his palm, very gently, against her fragile windpipe.

She enjoys being pinned down a little, this windstorm of a girl. Kylo is happy to indulge her.

They are in a bed this time. There are other details, too—a window thrown open to a humid evening. The distant crash and pull of the sea. But Kylo is less concerned with memorizing these tonight because, unlike the other dreams, this one is entirely a product of his own imagination.

It is only the memory of her that straddles him, phantom fingers flexing at his shoulders as she hovers over his lap. There is no point in scouring their surroundings for hints about her location because Rey is not truly _here,_ as she is in all the others.

Kylo doesn't mind. It leaves him free to enjoy her.

And he enjoys her very much.

Starlight washes over Rey's face as it tips backward, lashes fluttering, in anticipation of what comes next. He has touched her everywhere he can reach, as he always likes to do in these dreams—everywhere but the place where he is currently headed. His fingers trace circles up her inner thigh, a little higher each time. Until they are damp and sticky from where she is dripping for him.

"Ben," she whispers. He's not sure why she calls him this, especially since it's not really _her—_ but perhaps his dreaming mind knows it feels more real this way. That this ghost of Rey would breathe the name of his own ghost, if they were ever truly like this.

With infinite tenderness, his fingertips slide higher and higher still until they finally meet the slick, wrinkled flesh between her thighs. She trembles in his lap, breath hitching.

“Oh, yes.” He strokes a long finger against her, parting her lips. She is smooth here—and so deliciously _wet._ Kylo licks his lips. "My sweet little Jedi. Look how much you need me."

"Ben," she says again, voice laced with air—like she can hardly catch her breath. Like his name is stamped on both of her lungs, carried on each exhale.

Kylo finds the little nub of nerves that makes her tense, everywhere, with delirious pleasure. A few slow passes with the tip of his thumb, and she is already so close to tumbling over. His precious girl is always so _ready_ for him like this.

Because she is _his_ here. This projection of her, this cobbled amalgamation of fantasy and desire—she belongs utterly to him. In this place, Rey does not look upon him with disgust or pity. She does not ignore him, mouth pressed into a thin, silent line. She is not real here, but then neither is the rest of it—the terrible decisions he's made or the ones he still has yet to.

Here, he does not need to remember that he will kill her.

It always ends too soon, these dreams of her. He feels the pull back to reality before he is ready to let her go. Kylo's grip tightens on her body, anchoring her here, with _him—_ but it is of no use. She is slipping through his fingers like dust in the wind, her warmth fading from his skin like sunlight swept away by a cold breeze.

 _I will find you,_ he tells her, but the promise swirls and breaks apart like everything else, dissolving around him.

With a tearing gasp, Kylo wakes in his sleeper. Around him, the sheets have been kicked into a tangled mess. His fingers grasp and shake in the empty space above his lap, tracing the phantom curves where he had just been touching her.

No. Not her. An impossible fantasy of her—the way his sleeping mind, vulnerable to such delusion, would prefer her to be.

Staring into the cold darkness, Kylo imagines that the weight of her still hovers there. Welcoming him. As he takes himself in hand, his eyes slide shut.

He keeps imagining.

* * *

In the beginning, they come infrequently, these little glimpses into her consciousness. Only while they’re sleeping—and only when she’s vulnerable enough to let him slip through.

But she is visiting him more often now.

Rey has brought him somewhere green again tonight. The twin stars are hanging in the sky once more, two white suns that dangle high above the mountains. Kylo is beginning to believe she may actually be hiding here, out in the waking world. It is too frequent of a setting to be a coincidence.

If he were a stronger man, he might be absorbing as much information about this place as possible. He would be taking advantage of this exceptional opportunity to observe where his enemy is hiding. Capitalize on her moment of weakness.

As it were, he cannot take his eyes off her long enough to do so.

Rey has not yet noticed him. Perhaps she won’t notice him at all this time. That happens once in a while, when she is so caught up in her own inner world—training, fishing, hunting, cooking—that she never realizes Kylo is watching contemplatively some distance away.

Tonight, she is strolling through an orchard. Her little feet are bare in the dewy grass as she walks along, pausing at each tree to examine the growth on its branches. Every so often, she plucks a plump fruit from the tangle of leaves and flowers so that she can drop it in the wicker basket that dangles from her elbow. Other times, she sets the basket on the ground and brandishes a tool from her belt—handcrafted, by the looks of it—so that she can prune away some imperfection.

In the next row over, Kylo follows her, silent. Watching her through the filter of branches.

She is not particularly graceful, his little Jedi. She goes about her work with a quiet practicality, giving her complete attention to each tree that she passes.

She is still far lovelier than all the fruits and flowers on this entire planet.

Kylo brushes this thought away with a scowl. It is demeaning work, what she’s doing here. Frivolous. A task unfit for someone with her potential. This is exactly why she needs a teacher. She should be focusing her efforts on sharpening her abilities—not snipping plants on some fanciful green rock.

He is so lost in his disapproval that he almost misses the noise of amusement she makes some distance away, parting the branches of an apple tree.

“Perhaps you’re the one who needs a teacher.” Her voice drifts through the leaves, and Kylo nearly trips over himself. It takes a moment for him to recover.

“What did you say?”

“A teacher.” Rey walks around the tree and into the row where Kylo is standing, flabbergasted. She still doesn’t look at him, leaning in to study a ripening fruit instead. “The Force resides in all living things. Including these.”

“Do you presume to lecture me on the Force, scavenger?”

"Only if you presume to tell me I'm wasting my time." She rises to the tips of her toes, reaching for an apple at the top of the tree.

Kylo reaches over her, tugging it from the branch instead.

This, at least, gets her attention. She whirls to face him. Kylo can see that she aims for irritation; but she can't suppress that now-familiar flash of confused fascination that flickers across her face whenever she first looks upon him in these moments.

"It is a waste of time to keep running." His tone is almost gentle. "You won't be able to hide from me forever, Rey."

To his surprise, Rey reaches up and picks the fruit right from his fingers. "Neither can you."

Kylo cannot help himself. Her mouth is as red as the fruit in her hand, and she doesn't stop him as he cups her face in his fingers. As he leans down for a taste of her sweet little tongue.

_You cannot run from me, little Jedi._

Her lips curve into a smile, soft and small against his own.

_Do I look like I'm running?_

Kylo pulls her body roughly against his. Her lips part with surprise—or maybe desire—and he licks at the roof of her mouth, drinks up the little noises she makes when he begins to touch her, _there,_ exactly the way she likes.

The apple drops with a thud to the grass and meanders, rolling, down the hill.

* * *

The next time he sees her, she is running again.

They are in a forest of dead trees. Black and charred, their skeletons reach toward a phosphorus sky, empty of stars. His boots pound across the ashy ground, stirring up small clouds of dust in their wake. There is only the blood in his ears, the air in his lungs, the flicker of her light on the approaching horizon—his prey.

_You cannot run forever, Rey._

She knows this. Even without him reaching for her, projecting his intentions across their shivering bond, she knows—can sense him across solar systems, across spiraling constellations, and can certainly sense him now, her predator, giving chase to her in this fruitless parody of a hunt.

They both know how this ends, after all.

Still, she runs.

She is swift, his little Jedi. She has been training. He wants to know what she does to practice. Does she still heed the useless teachings of his uncle? Or has she begun to follow that which calls to her from the darkest wellsprings of her heart, where she will finally discover her true power?

Distracted by his ruminations, he almost does not notice she has halted before him until the flash of her saber cuts through the air, nearly decapitating him.

He has her cornered against a hollow tree in less than a heartbeat.

"You monster," she hisses, and there are tears streaming down her face, hot and furious. "You told me you would protect them—that they would be _safe—"_

"I said no such thing." Kylo leans into his blade, presses her harder against the trunk where crimson light meets blue. "I have no interest in your traitorous little companions beyond their utility in leading me to you."

"They'll never betray me."

"Then they will die," he tells her, eyes flashing. "Every last one of them. I will hunt them down and I will crush them, one by one, until you deliver yourself to me. And you _will_ deliver yourself, Rey." His heart trembles wildly. "I have seen it."

"Did you see the rest of it?"

Something in her tone makes him falter. "The rest?"

"The rest of what's to come." Her eyes soften. "Between us."

Around them, ash swirls and whispers in the dead wood.

"I will have to kill you," he tells her, softly, over the hum of his saber. The way one might whisper to a lover.

Her brow furrows, and Kylo can feel her pushing, _pushing_ at the crumbling walls of his defenses until he is assaulted, he is overwhelmed by a thousand rushing images—

(she is running through the grass, through the woods, over white sands as far as the eye can see—waves crashing in the night as she lowers herself, inch by trembling inch, onto his lap—Rey backed against a wall, pleading, crying, gasping, just before he—)

"No." He is the one gasping, he realizes. The empty pleas, the wet tears on his cheeks—they belong to him. "You're wrong."

"Please," she whispers. Her grip falters on her lightsaber. The images continue to rush past him, through him—

(Rey's smile, thrown over her shoulder, easy and open—the taste of her sweat as he follows it down the curve of her spine—)

"You're wrong," he says again, stumbling backward, but she is following him—his blade falls to the ground with a hiss—

(dark lashes fluttering across her cheek—a light, too bright, too hot—engulfing him, engulfing—)

"I've seen it, Ben," she tells him. "There is no other way."

"I'll have to kill you, if you don't stop." It is the only thing he knows, and he clings to it, drowning in this sea of sentiment, of memories that have not yet come to pass. "You cannot run forever."

His back hits the hard bark of a tree, and there is nowhere left for him to go.

Rey's fingers reach for his face, brush across the scar she left there, another lifetime ago.

"I know."

When she kisses him this time, it feels like he's the one that's dying.

* * *

There are whispers that he is beginning to go mad.

They think he doesn’t notice. That he doesn’t hear. Even his Stormtroopers are talking into their cups now, emboldened by the rumors that swirl around the Supremacy like a heavy cloud. Enshrouding them. Keeping them safe.

Their minds will never be safe. Not from him.

Kylo knows what they think of him. They complain endlessly about his fixation on quashing the remainder of the Rebellion, as scattered as it may be. They say it is irrational. A waste of time.

It is only those who are bold enough to utter her name that he punishes.

Every day, Kylo seeks out his general for more information. Every day, Hux demonstrates new and unprecedented bounds to his uselessness. _Nothing new, Supreme Leader,_ he says, not quite meeting his eyes. _There is no sign of her._

It doesn’t matter.

If they won’t find her, Kylo will simply do it himself.

He dedicates all his waking hours to this singular purpose. Scouring maps, databases, dusty books with bindings that crumble with the turn of a yellowed page.

Green planets. Twin suns. Fertile.

He’s getting close.

He can feel it. He can feel _her._

She will be his soon enough.

* * *

They lie in the grass like they have done this a thousand times before.

Rey is sprawled across his chest, all slender limbs and wispy fabric. She dresses light for the heat of this planet. Kylo often tries to convince her not to wear anything at all. Most of the time, he is successful.

This, it seems, will be one of those times.

His hands wander along the softness of her thighs, and they part easily for him. Like water around the bow of a ship. Everything about her is fluid, like this. He can still feel the pull of her power, a quiet hum beneath her skin. She melts beneath his touch, this tempest of a girl, and he is captivated. He is enthralled.

He is utterly, completely her own.

She knows this. The sly knowledge of his captivity curls in the corners of her mouth—in her eyes, crinkling at the edges of some insignificant joke. He loves to make her smile. This newfound power to transform her face into something soft, something radiant—he cups it in the palms of his hands and holds it, tenderly, close to his chest. _His treasure._

He calls her that, sometimes, when he rolls her over on the grass and strips her bare. Until the galaxies that stretch between them are nothing but the skin that separates their bodies, sliding, colliding, again and again.

Slowly, he continues his feather-light exploration of her thighs. Past the flimsy fabric that cradles her center. Upward still, so that his knuckles drag along each knot of her spine. Tenderly.

Her entire body trembles against him.

"We can’t,” Rey whispers, face buried in the side of his neck.

"We can."

“But there are—things. That we still need to discuss.”

He relishes the hitch in her breath, such a tiny sound, when his fingers dip between her cheeks. “I know.”

“Ben.”

She sits up abruptly. Straddling his thighs, her hair is soft with sunlight. Kylo needs to blink a few moments to adjust to the vision of her, surrounded by white light. It stirs something within him. A memory, perhaps—or a premonition.

A frown creases her forehead. “We can’t keep doing this.”

“No. We can’t.”

This seems to surprise her. Kylo takes the opportunity to lift himself up on his elbows. Unable to keep his body from responding to the tug of her gravity, perfectly matched to his.

“Which is why I am coming to get you.”

 _”Ben,”_ she says again, but his name trembles on her lips this time. The same way her legs tremble as his hands run over them, open-palmed and huge around her thighs.

“We could have this,” he murmurs, his voice low with promise. “I could have you. Every day. Every night. Every moment in between.”

She lets out a breathless chuckle. “We couldn’t—we couldn’t possibly— _oh—“_

Kylo cuts her off with a deep kiss, leaning up and pulling her into his lap. It’s easier like this. It always is. Her touch soothes some deep ache within him, even just the ghost of it, here in this place.

He is hungry to know what this would feel like, were she truly writhing in his lap.

The thought must seep through their connection, because Rey moans into his mouth. Dizzy with it. He can feel her protests fall away as easily as the wispy wraps that cover her body—unraveling around both of them.

It will never stop surprising him, how wet she gets for him in these moments. How her body changes, making room for him. His fingers slide up into her— _heat, tight heat, gripping his knuckles—_ and Kylo can hardly hear for the blood rushing in his ears. In his cock.

Half a second later, she is flat on her back in the grass. There is hardly time for shock to flit across her face before it melts into pleasure—delirious, head-spinning pleasure—as Kylo pushes himself inside. Until there’s nothing left of himself to fit in her.

She already has all of him.

When he begins to move inside her, the look on her face… he can almost pretend he has all of her, too.

They never last long, in these moments. Their pleasure bleeds ragged around the edges and spills, overflowing, into one another—two storms meeting over a single churning sea.

But there is something different about this time.

Something final.

It makes him slow his pace. He touches the freckles on her neck and wonders what they will taste like, when he finally takes her in person.

“We can’t,” she says again, brokenly, but the words are lost on a gasp when his hand slides between their bodies. Stroking her where she is so sweet and pink and sensitive for him, stretched wide open.

“We _can,”_ he says roughly, and he knows. He knows it’s the beginning of the end. “I will find you, Rey. And I will have you. In every way, I will have you.”

They lie in the grass, after, like they’ve done this a thousand times before. Rey is sprawled across his chest, but she is naked now. Bare to him in every way.

And still her expression is so unreadable when she sits up. Traces the scar she gave him so long ago.

“Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” Rey whispers. “Please.”

Kylo Ren wakes to the fading vision of her hair bright with summer, her face eclipsed by the white sun as it swallows her whole.

* * *

In the end, the answer is right beneath his nose.

The planet does not have a name. It is tucked deep within a tome on the bookshelf in his very own quarters. To think that all this time, he has been scouring libraries and atlases and ancient maps—and the answer has lurked within the very same bedchambers where he has spent so many tortured nights. Agonizing over her.

He traces the outline of it with one long finger. It trembles as it finds the hills. The blue sea, slicing through its center.

She is here. On this tiny speck of green and pink. His Rey. His sweet little Jedi.

His treasure.

Kylo inhales deeply, relishing the depths of his satisfaction. His eyes slide shut as he pictures it. Everything has been leading to this moment. He can feel it. Knows it, intimately, deep within his heart.

It won’t be long now.

* * *

When the nose of his fighter first breaks into the atmosphere, Kylo wonders if he has made a mistake.

He leans forward in his seat. Frowns. The heady anticipation that has been his constant companion since his discovery falters.

A mistake. He must have made a mistake.

This planet is not green.

Though... it might have been, once. Kylo squints into the distance and feels the hazy stirrings of recognition rouse in his breast. _Yes._ The shape of those endless hills rises on the horizon, and he knows—he _knows_ he would recognize them anywhere.

It should bring him comfort, the sight of those hills. It means he has arrived.

But they are—not what he remembers.

That isn’t right, though.

His head begins to throb, just on the edge of painful.

How could he remember a place he’s never been?

But he has been here. In a thousand dreams, and maybe more. But maybe… Kylo’s hands squeeze around the controls of his fighter. Struggling to think.

Maybe he has been here outside of his dreams, too.

The pain in his temples intensifies. Clouding his thoughts. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters right now but his need to find her again. He closes his eyes and reaches—searching—prowling—before he finds it.

There.

The barest trace of her—a soft breath, a mist of ocean breeze—but she is there.

Kylo wets his lips.

If it is a chase his girl wants, then a chase he shall give her.

In his preparations for this journey, he expected it to be difficult to locate her. His fighter has enough food and drink for several days—even if he also entertained fantasies of an orchard overflowing with fruit. Of a blanket beneath a tree, where they would spread meals rich with flavor from this lush planet.

Looking down at the barren earth, he wonders if it had all been a trick. A deception meant to lure him, unsuspecting, with his guard down.

The thought makes bitter acid rise in his throat.

It matters not. Kylo knows her, now. Knows the precise location of each and every fracture in her carefully constructed shields. He’s memorized all the places where he needs to touch and whisper until she melts beneath his hands.

This knowledge should bring him comfort.

But as Kylo looks down upon this empty place... He feels only disquiet. Rising within him like a black and murky tide.

He expected it to be difficult to locate her. He didn’t expect his hands to guide him on the wings of some invisible intuition, soaring over the burnt trees and red soil like a bird of prey. It is his connection to her, he knows. Drawing him ever closer.

Or maybe it's her own memories. Her knowledge of this place, lingering beneath the map of his own thoughts.

But there is… something wrong. A gap. A fissure somewhere, cracking in the deepest part of his mind. Slicing through acidic air, Kylo’s ship draws nearer, his grip grows tighter, and he finds that he suddenly—he knows.

He _has_ been here before.

But when? And how?

And, perhaps most importantly—why can’t he remember?

The disquiet in his heart begins to morph. To widen. To stretch until it is a yawning, gaping hole that threatens to engulf him. Full of things he has forgotten.

Burnt trees give way to a barren, dry sea. He remembers this sea. It had been blue as the sky, when he was here—but now it is empty. The hills grow larger. Darker.

Too dark.

Why can’t he _remember?_

The breach expanding within him now seems to be rushing, sprawling, from behind.

Chasing him.

Kylo fears if he were to look back, he would find the pieces of this place collapsing. That he would be met with the sight of their paradise, caving in under the weight of its own gravity.

So he doesn't look back.

He is not conscious of making the decision to land. The ship touches down on the barren shore as if it has done this a thousand times before. He opens the door, and the arid air of this place would burn his lungs, if he didn't have his helmet.

It is still difficult to breathe. Even with his helmet, he struggles to draw in air. As though his lungs aren't working properly. Or perhaps it is his mind, racing, whirling—grasping at something that isn't quite—

There.

She is there.

He can see her, clear as day. Clear as sunshine, spilling across her freckles. Her muscles, taut as she spins and kicks and slashes with her staff.

“Like that?” Breathless with exertion, Rey throws a grin over her shoulder. Seeking his approval.

“Almost.” Kylo takes a few steps forward in the tall grass. His hands reach to position her. “But next time, try landing so that—”

His fingers fall straight through her shoulder.

The grass burns to a crisp. She burns along with it, like ash on the winds of a dream.

Or perhaps—a memory.

Another sharp pain slices abruptly through his skull. Kylo clutches at his mask, and the air burns in his lungs, and the dirt scrapes beneath his boots as he stumbles backward.

What kind of sorcery—what kind of _madness—_

_“Rey!”_

His voice is hoarse, even through the modulator. He staggers forward, even as his head splits with pain. There is the tree _—their_ tree, swaying with leaves, sunlight drifting through the branches—and there is the cool shadow it casts across the grass as he hauls her into his arms, touching her, kissing her, _everywhere_ —

No. _No._ He isn't. _She_ isn’t. The tree is burnt. Its branches are bare. There is no shade, and the sun burns and burns above, and Kylo—he can hardly breathe through the agony in his head.

In his heart.

Why—why can’t he _remember–?_

Behind him, the chasm yawns ever wider.

It whispers to him, now. Entreating him to go back—back to his ship, to the Supremacy—anywhere. Anywhere at all, as long as it is away from this cursed place with its ghosts and its dusty earth the color of blood beneath his boots.

Kylo presses forward.

Here is the orchard. He has been here, too—he _knows_ he has—not in dreams, but in life. But it is different now. There is the stink of overripe fruit, rotting before his eyes. The taste of cherries on her tongue, so sweet in his mouth. “The Force resides in all living things,” she murmurs, and the flowers explode into white petals all around them. Into charred crisps, swept away on the hot wind.

Her name rings in his ears, again and again. It is screamed. It is fraught with terror.

It is coming from his own mouth. Or—no. No. It is him, but it’s _not_. He sees the ghost of himself, furious—he feels the rage hot in his breast as he chases her, and he is roaring—he is shouting, he is—

Emerging, panting, at the crest of the hill. At the path to their little cabin.

Hope swells, a helpless thing, within his battered chest.

The cabin. It is still there. Covered in ivy. Windows thrown open to the sea. Kylo squeezes his eyes shut, _hard_ , but—but it’s still there when he opens them again.

He lived here, once.

He suddenly knows this, clear as the cloudless sky above them.

They both did.

Kylo’s heart lurches. Burns. A few more staggering steps, and the door creaks open to reveal—

Rey.

The panic in his heart quiets, just a little.

Rey. His Rey. She is still here. Waiting for him.

_She waited she waited she waited she—_

“I was beginning to worry you wouldn’t come back.”

Her hands are soft as the sea breeze, carding through his hair. Kylo’s head pounds. His vision swims. Her mouth is the sweetest thing he’s ever tasted, brushing against his lips.

“I told you I would,” he whispers.

There is salt on his tongue. Tears, he realizes. His own tears. Or hers.

He tries to grasp her face, but reality is suddenly slippery, shifting all around them. Red sand, sifting rapidly between his fingers.

In the distance, some tiny, crying thing is pleading with him. Begging him. He recognizes this is his last opportunity to walk away.

He does not walk away.

The room changes. Then changes again. A dozen days, or a hundred, racing before his eyes. Inside his heart.

He sees moonlight spilling on the bed, over her naked body. Sleeping.

He sees her sweet little mouth parting, over and over, around his name.

He sees her eyes offering him something no one’s ever given him. A gift. A treasure.

 _His_ treasure.

“Rey,” he says hoarsely, but the world is tilting—collapsing—and then—

And then he sees her.

Cast in shadow.

Her face is—unrecognizable. Ruddy with tears. Twisted up with pain, as she backs up against the wall.

“I can’t,” she’s saying, over and over. “I can’t, Ben. Not like this.”

“You have no choice.”

“I’ve always had a choice.” Her voice is wet. Shaking. “But I can’t choose this.”

He won’t raise his blade against her. He won’t. But he is still sickeningly aware of how she sees him, stalking across the cabin. A monster in a mask.

“I always knew it would end this way,” she says, very quietly.

He can hardly see her through the pain that rips, screaming, through him. Tearing him apart, piece by piece. Clawing straight through the fabric that makes up his very reality.

_I’m sorry, Ben._

The chasm—it is all around them now. Ben hesitates, swaying, at the edge of it all. Teetering over the deep and sprawling abyss of forgotten things that awaits him at its bottom.

Even now, he can catch glimpses of the images that lurk there. Her mouth. Her ankles. Her garden, vast and sprawling. Her sun. Blazing bright. Brighter, brighter, brighter still.

And for a single moment—it is all illuminated.

The darkness at the bottom of the pit… it’s all right there, spread out before him.

A sob is ripped from his throat. _No._ A pain that runs much deeper than the agony of his mind, his world unravelling—it twists and twists inside his heart.

He looks down into the abyss.

He remembers.

“No,” Ben cries out, but the word is lost to the roaring all around them. Around _him_. Because—because she isn’t here. She isn’t. She hasn’t been here. Not since he—not since—

The cabin is falling apart. Collapsing. He remembers— _n_ _o_ —he remembers the Force, snapping and screaming around them. The ultimatum she gave him. He remembers her face, a dark shadow against the sun as she drew it close and closer still—until its light spread like fire across the sky. Swallowing them whole.

Taking her from him.

He remembers the sound of his name. His real name.

It’s the last thing he remembers for a very long time.

* * *

When he is able to see again, Ben is kneeling in a crater as large as the desert sea.

He is alone.

With a violent yank, he pulls off his mask. It is suffocating. Wet with tears. He gulps in the burning air—huge, shuddering breaths. Gasping.

It’s not enough.

A sound like a wounded animal tears from his chest, straight to the sky. He realizes, for the first time, that there is only one star there now.

But even that’s not right.

Because this—this is not the first time he’s realized this.

Smearing dust across his face, Ben scrubs at the wetness there. Trying to clear his vision. He remembers this pain, older and deeper than anything he’s ever felt. The loss. The dreams.

The memories.

Because that’s what they are. What they’ve always been.

Memories of this place, and the dreams that led them here.

Panting, Ben looks toward the sky. At the single sun that hangs there. His eyes fall shut.

He lets himself remember one last time.

With the final remnants of his energy, he calls the Force to him and slowly, painfully, fills in the chasm of all that he needs to forget.

* * *

The sun is almost gone by the time he is finished.

Lying in the dirt, Ben Solo turns his wet face to the darkening sky. He doesn’t know what he’s doing here. Nor is he aware of any reason for his profound exhaustion.

He doesn’t remember much of anything, really.

Staring up into the night, however, Ben thinks he might remember gazing up at these constellations once. The crash of distant waves. The smell of soft hair, pressed against his face.

Ben turns his head weakly. Frowns at the faraway hills.

No. He is mistaken.

He is certain he doesn't know this place at all.

But before oblivion can swallow him, he thinks he can remember her face.

Her face, accompanied by small hands that smooth the dust from his cheeks. He groans, battling the blanket of unconsciousness that settles over him, and remembers a cool and tingling energy, washing across his body. It floods through every part of him, just on the edge of too bright. Cleansing him.

Gently—so gently—it carries him through the air, through the open door of his ship.

Soft lips brush across his forehead. Words are whispered there, their meaning long forgotten.

Ben is filled with a sensation of deep and profound peace.

The last thing he thinks, before his fighter lifts off in a cloud of red dust, is that he can't remember ever feeling this way.

* * *

Days pass. Weeks. Kylo doesn't think of the sea, or the two white suns hanging in the sky, or the ragtag remainder of the Resistance.

The dreams only begin when he is finally starting to forget her.

**Author's Note:**

> This was very emotional for me to write, so thank you for coming along. I also experimented with a lot of new things here. I know the ending is ambiguous, but I hope it isn't too terribly confusing. 
> 
> I'd really love to hear your thoughts if you have any. Thank you again for reading <3
> 
> Come say hi on [twitter](https://twitter.com/ohwise1ne).


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